Toward a "Demographically Reflective Democracy": How Identity-Based PACs and Candidates Co-Construct Identity Representation in U.S. Electoral Politics

In U.S. politics, political action committees (PACs) manage and distribute money and other resources to political candidates and causes. Identity-based PACs have emerged with the goal of increasing the representation of historically minoritized gender, sexuality, racial, and ethnic groups in American government through funding and supporting endorsed electoral candidates. However, neither the process by which identity-based PACs select candidates to uplift nor their relationships with endorsed candidates are well understood. Drawing on Bourdieu’s ([1991] 2009) theory of political alienation through delegation and Saward’s (2006) framework of representative claim-making, this research asks: what role do identity-based PACs play in shaping identity representation in U.S. politics? Drawing on twenty-one in-depth interviews with identity-based PAC representatives, candidates, and campaign staff, as well as endorsement questionnaires from eighteen identity-based PACs registered with the Federal Election Commission in the 2023-24 filing year, I first identify the constitutive elements of the representative claims that identity-based PACs make on behalf of minoritized identity groups about the necessity of identity parity in democratic government through the shaping, selection, and support of candidates. Next, I examine how identity-based PACs and endorsed candidates negotiate the multivalent meanings of representation throughout the electoral process, from recruitment and training to endorsement. Rather than solely choosing candidates from a pre-existing pool of eligible contenders, identity-based PACs and their affiliated organizations seek to produce the kinds of candidates they wish to endorse. On the campaign trail, endorsed candidates and identity-based PACs must negotiate tensions between identity-based PAC visions of demographic parity and the substantive representation of local constituencies when presenting their candidature to voters. This research has implications for the study of political representation by revealing a spectrum of tensions negotiated between the delegated and the delegating within efforts to intervene in representative democracy to resolve the underrepresentation of minoritized groups.